


War Scars

by ivanolix



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Child Abuse, Gen, Gen Fic, POV Female Character, Scars, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-02
Updated: 2009-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-22 03:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivanolix/pseuds/ivanolix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the Kara gen ficathon prompt "scars and souvenirs"</p>
    </blockquote>





	War Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Kara gen ficathon prompt "scars and souvenirs"

Kara had scars like glaciers; impossible to miss on the surface, but merely a distraction for what lay underneath.

"Wouldn't have expected so many scars from someone who lives in a metal tube all day," Anders commented after their impromptu pyramid game on Caprica.

The comment didn't faze Kara. She'd had years to shape scars to her bidding.

Scars on bones were hidden, fingers appearing long and slender and strong. She could almost forget the pole to the forehead that had healed just wrong, leaving a cowlick that flipped her hair to the left. The welt left on her shoulder she had covered up with a pyramid tattoo during minor leagues, frustrated enough to demand solid black marks.

"Wasn't always a pilot," Kara replied to Anders absently.

She didn't notice that he didn't ask a follow-up question, meaning it wasn't a surprise.

It had looked like the Six added a new scar to her eyebrow.

"What is that one, number 30?" Helo had remarked. He didn't guess why she had them.

"Depends on if you count them individually," Kara answered. And she started at the back of her neck as they walked.

One just under the fringe of her hair. A cheap throwing range and knives and a boy too frightened afterwards to ask her out, less from his mistake and more from the way she grinned when her hand came back bloody.

Three in a line on her right shoulder, a grassy pyramid court's doing. Her opponent's cleated shoe had almost been put on a plaque by her teasing team.

The side of her wrist bore the remembrance of a practice wilderness campaign and a hot poker that had tipped.

One of the scars on her stomach told of an honorable appendectomy. Others would join them that spoke of less honorable doctors.

Zak had left his mark on one finger. She could easily recall sucking the little slit her cleaver had made when he caught her unawares in the kitchen, the iron taste not so bitter in his presence.

A whole set on her hip and upper thigh were a missed parachute landing, some double-scarred since that planet with her pet raider.

One on her upper calf came during her time as military instructor, and that student had shaken leaf-like every day she limped thereafter.

The left knee bore two long silver-white marks, a neat testament to some of her worst days. Pyramid had held her life, each game a vital combination of fluid actions, powerful strikes, and more and more jabs into her mother's army-loving heart. Kara didn't plan to serve, she planned to shine.

The crack of bone, more than one, had Kara screaming more than the pain. It was her career shattering, she knew, even before the hospital and 14 hours of reconstructive surgery. Her team had championships to attend; she ended up watching them while wound up on pain meds and still too young to drown her sorrows.

Those two scars were her pledge to the military, as soon as she recovered enough. 18 months wasn't soon enough.

And last, there's that one toe she dropped a broken shot glass on.

Helo knows them all, and he laughs about them. Just "war" scars she's collected. And he's right. She won the war against her mother by making her mother's marks on her meaningless compared to the ones she gathered. Kara hallows each of her scars.


End file.
